Harshing your mellow since 9/01

Category: Meltdown? What Meltdown?

MSNBC reporter Katy Tur writes in her new book that she could feel “bile in the back of my throat” upon hearing Donald Trump had won the presidency in 2016.

In her book Unbelievable recounting her time covering Trump’s stunning presidential run, Tur describes feeling disoriented, nauseous, and fearful that Trump would not respect term limits after learning he had defeated Hillary Clinton, the Hill reported Wednesday.

“The room goes wavy. My stomach churns,” Tur says. “I can feel the bile in the back of my throat.”

“I’ve heard him insult a war hero,

Umm, not exactly, no. He said something slightly insensitive about John McCain, which is no way no how the same thing. And since when did you “liberal” types develop the slightest warm regard for war heroes anyway? Beyond calling them babykillers and spitting on them at airports, I mean.

brag about grabbing women by the pussy,

Yeah, in a clandestinely-recorded private shit-talk session which mirrors the ones men have among themselves each and every day, wherein they say the exact same sort of thing or worse—none of which means anything at all, and certainly doesn’t come anywhere near rising to the level of sexual assault, as some of you feeble hysterics tried to claim.

denigrate the judicial system,

Which is eminently denigratable, actually.

demonize immigrants,

Nope; didn’t “demonize” anybody, and they ain’t “immigrants.” They’re illegal aliens, and therefore, by definition, criminals. They have no right to be here and have no just expectation of anything other than deportation, which is all Trump ever said about them, really.

fight with the pope,

Uhhh….whuuuh? I missed that one entirely. Not that this sorry excuse for a Pope couldn’t use a good rap upside his empty head to knock some sense into him, mind. But again: since when did you libtards start getting all hot and bothered and Expressing Concern over anybody picking fights, verbal or otherwise, with the Pope? Or any other Christian, for that matter?

Oh, that’s right; this one is a commie, so you people like him just fine. It’s not so much that Trump “fought with the Pope,” as that he fought with THIS Pope, whom you expect to endorse abortion, transgenderism, and the supremacy of Islam any day now, and have therefore all clasped to your bosom as a matter of the usual political expediency rather than any respect for the Catholic faith. My bad.

doubt the democratic process,

Yeah, after being baited into it by gotcha questions from the “liberal” media. Which process is eminently doubtful, by the way, being rife with corruption and fraud which is dealt out almost entirely by your side.

advocate torture and war crimes,

Waterboarding and certain other enhanced interrogation techniques are neither torture nor war crimes.

tout the size of his junk in a presidential debate,

Again, after being baited into it, by a losing candidate who mentioned the size of Trump’s hands as a means to an innuendo. And it was all just joking around anyway, ferchrissakes. Lighten up, for heaven’s sake.

trash the media,

And if ever there was a US institution that deserved a good trashing…couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of assholes, if you ask me, and I’d be damned pleased to see a whole lot more of it.

and endanger my life,” Tur continued.

Oh, boo fucking hoo. “Endanger your life”—HOW, exactly? Sorry, but I’m gonna need some specifics on that one, cupcake. And should you be able to produce any, which we both know you can’t, I’m pretty sure such a thing would amount to an actionable crime, and you ought to be dialing 911 instead of whimpering in public over it. Calling you and your fellow propagandists out on your partisan bullshit and endless assaults against Trump (over 90% of stories about him during the campaign and since have been negative, which tells the story all by itself) does NOT constitute “endangering your life.”

After all that weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, I’m beginning to think this delicate flower ain’t near tough enough for a career in journalism. She seems about ready to collapse in a weeping heap at the slightest provocation.

Yeah, okay, I had plenty of fun batting that prim little milksop around, but there’s a slightly more serious point to be made, and Ace sarcastically makes it:

These journ0lismists are so amazingly professional, nearly superhuman in their ability to separate their political and emotional selves from the priestly work of writing down things other people say.

It cannot be questioned that anything Tur might have to “report” about Trump is completely true and unbiased, for she is of the Priestly Caste, Journ0lismist Sect, and was taught in a 4 credit class in Journ0lisming School how to separate the ego from the transcendental mind and attain perfect harmonious oneness with the universe where the self dissolves and the observer becomes indistinguishable from the observed.

Of course we all already know the answer to this question anyway, but I’m a-gonna ask: Is there anybody at all out there who could believe for a moment that this twink and her fellows could possibly be capable of objectively reporting…well, anything?

“The border is secure,” he told reporters after the Senate Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. “[Sen.] Martin Heinrich [(D-N.M.)] talked to the caucus today. He’s a border state senator. He said he can say without any equivocation the border is secure.”

Ace, for one, has a lot of fun kicking this seemingly–hell, patently–absurd statement around. But look at it from Reid’s warped point of view: the border is currently every bit as secure as he wants it to be–which is to say damned near abolished–so why wouldn’t he make a statement that, to him, must seem incontrovertible and obvious?

Now, if you want to talk about Reid’s grasp of reality and his cynical manipulation of the English language, well, that would be another thing altogether.

I listened to the speech last night, even though I didn’t expect much.

But I grew up around those waters. I love the Gulf. This is like torture for me, so I listened, hoping that at a minimum the Jones Act would be waived:

[S]ome of the best dredgers and skimmers from countries like Belgium, The Netherlands and Norway are being kept away from clean-up efforts in the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because of the Jones Act—a protectionist law that requires vessels working in US waters be built in the US and be crewed by US [i.e., “union”] workers.

Waivers to the Jones Act were granted by the administration of George W. Bush in the days following hurricane Katrina. And today, the Obama White House said waivers might again be considered. “If there is the need for any type of waiver, that would obviously be granted,” said White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs. “But, we’ve not had that problem thus far.”

“Gee, no problems here. Move on. Nothing to see here, citizen. That’s not oil on your beach, it’s shinola. Can I rub some on your back?”

This speech was suited for Day 1 of a catastrophe, not Day 57. It had no answers at all. None. It’s as if Rip van Obama awoke after eight weeks of slumber and had been told just that morning about a massive problem in the Gulf of Mexico. For a man who has repeatedly claimed to be “fully engaged since Day 1,” and who repeated that claim last night, Obama gave every impression of still being in the spitballing stage of crisis management.

Obama didn’t even offer an original thought for spitballing.

The only time he came alive last night was when he tried to Blame Bush [“Over the last decade…”] and pass Cap and Tax.

He’s even using the same argument he used for HealthControl: “Inaction is not an option! The status quo is unacceptable!”

He also tried to Alinskyize Bush and Minerals Management Service (“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it,”) even though he campaigned on fixing the agency two years ago. When he did get a new agency chief, she was assigned to work on wind, not minerals.

Now she’s been fired, made a scapegoat for Obama’s incompetence, and his second agency head is on the way. How is that Bush’s fault?

No more golf.
No more rock concerts.
No more parties.
No more fund-raisers.
No more vacations.
No more business as usual.
Waive the Jones Act.
Put the Navy in charge if it will help.
Meet with BP. Not once, for 20 minutes. Every damn day until you get this hole plugged.

I did not watch the speech myself. Here’s the reason. Because my experience is, when you listen to a guy like a professional politician, he’s gonna say all the right things to me. I’m not interested in words. I’m interested in actions.

[T]he Afghanistan war request contained a vague provision — indeed, not even carrying the words “Guantanamo Bay” — called a “transfer fund” to authorize the purchase of the Thomson Correction Center in Illinois. …But buried at the bottom of an extensive summary the committee released last night is an express prohibition on the use of any Defense Department money to buy a new detention facility. …“It doesn’t mean that the proposal is dead, but it’s hard to see how it makes a comeback after the House Armed Services Committee says there can’t be money spent on Thomson.”

That’s not all. While the bill doesn’t renew the current Congressional ban on transferring detainees from Guantanamo into the U.S. — set to expire in October — it requires President Obama to submit a “a comprehensive disposition plan and risk assessment” for any future detainee transfer. Congress would then get “120 days to review the disposition plan before it could be carried out.” Additionally, Congress would get a 30-day review period for the proposed transfer of any detainee from Guantanamo to a foreign country in order to check against a detainee inflicting violence against the U.S. or its interests.

“You won’t find any mention of the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,'” Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri said of the draft language for the bill, adding that he and the ranking Republican member of the committee had an agreement not to address the gay ban in committee. “Mr. [Buck] McKeon and I have spoken about this, we have agreed to support Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates’s request for time to study the issue, and we do not support this issue being raised in this markup.”

…Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, has said he will move forward with a repeal measure if he has the votes to pass it. According to repeal advocates, he is likely one or two votes short of having the necessary commitments from other senators on the committee.

Yesterday, President Obama – on the WH lawn – stood in solidarity with Mexico’s President Calderon against Arizona’s new immigration law. Today, it was Democrats who stood up and applauded Calderon’s remarks against the bill during a joint session of Congress…

Well, we’ve finally found something our President and the Democrats in Congress will stand up for: a foreign “leader” – one whose own country has tough immigration laws similar to our own federal laws on the issue – slamming and demagoguing a state law on immigration that … essentially mirrors our federal law, and has many similarities to Mexico’s laws as well.

What a despicable, disgraceful lot. All of them.

Gitmo remaining open, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell and Federal Immigration Law–what do all three of these issues have in common?

a.) These are all issues used by Democrats to beat up on Republicans,
b.) Even though the laws were passed by Democrats
c.) And these are issues Democrats use to whip up Identity Groups, even though
d.) These are all issues Democrats could schedule a vote on tomorrow if they wanted to, and maybe even win,
e.) But they won’t do it, because they lack the guts to stand up and honestly defend their extreme positions in front of voters because
f.) They simply won’t put their names on the line if it might cost them anything.

The answer is, of course, g.) all of the above.

Don’t get me wrong–I’m glad they lack the guts to bring Gitmo here, to impose a radical social agenda on the military and to openly advocate abolishing our borders.

It’s just the gutlessness of it all.

UPDATE: Charlie Crist brings back McCain-Kennedy because he is your moral superior, and because it would pay for SoshSecurity.

Teddy Roosevelt strongly condemned looking at immigrants as mere economic units and not as future countrymen and brothers. Is it really the moral high ground to let people in because you want their money? This is like conceiving a child to use it for spare parts.

Indeed, the lack of children is part of the problem. Europe has already tried replacing their own children with Turks, Algerians and Pakistanis. Is it working for them?

People are generally assets, not liabilities. But liberalism screws up everything it touches. The incentives of the Multi-Cultural Welfare State turn assets into liabilities.

Any immigrant would have to generate an awful lot of income to cover the costs of the Earned Income Credit, food stamps, free Medicaid, hospitals, jails, schools and all the other programs, including his own Social Security–and he’s going to pay for Charlie Crist’s benefits too?

The Welfare State creates reasons not to welcome all those that we otherwise could.

And race preferences also drive a wedge between all of us; why would average Americans happily welcome people who will eventually be given preferences over them in private employment, government employment and school placement? Or if not against them, against their children or grandchildren? State-sponsored racialism is a divisive wedge used by liberals to claw their way into power and keep it.

We’re already down to three Social Security taxpayers for each recipient. If this keeps going, we’ll one day assign each taxpayer his own personal taxpayee!

“Here, Bob; here’s your cut of my paycheck.”
“Thanks, Steve. Keep up the good work! We’re all depending on you–heh heh. I’m goin’ fishin’ now–I’ll see you next payday!”

“We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.”–Ronald Reagan, 1964

Having read the post by Rep. McMorris Rodgers, I thought it might be helpful to post a few words from a statesman with a very different view of the IMF:

The IMF is the linchpin of the international financial system. . . . I have an unbreakable commitment to increased funding for the IMF. . . . The stakes are great. This [quota increase] legislation is not only crucial to the recovery of America’s trading partners abroad and to the stability of the entire international financial system, it is also necessary to a sustained recovery in the United States.

As regular readers around here may know, I am no fan of the EU, the euro, or socialism (a noticeable portion of the increase in public spending in Greece actually took place under an at least nominally conservative government, but why let facts intrude on an entertaining adjective?), but for President Obama to oppose the IMF’s participation in the Greek loan would be an act of truly astonishing irresponsibility, albeit one apparently supported by a section of the post-Reagan GOP.

Regarding the Greek independence movement, Adams said that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” That was not his last word on the subject, however. In the mid-1820s, President Adams wanted to help the nascent South American republics.

Though Adams thought America in his day should stay out of international struggles beyond the Western Hemisphere, he didn’t think that would always be the case. President Washington had said that Americans should have “as little political connection as possible” with Europe. As his diplomatic dispatches from Europe in the 1790s make clear, Adams agreed. Yet President Adams argued in 1826 that Washington gave counsel for his day, not for eternity: “I cannot overlook the reflection that the counsel of Washington in that instance, like all the counsels of wisdom, was founded upon the circumstances in which our country and the world around us were situated at the time when it was given…. [But] compare our situation and the circumstances of that time with those of the present day, and what, from the very words of Washington then, would be his counsels to his countrymen now?” As the nation grew politically, economically, and geographically, its role in the world would necessarily change.

By 1946, Greece and Czechoslovakia were the only countries in eastern Europe that weren’t Communist. Even in Greece, the government, which was being supported by British soldiers, was having to fight a civil war against the Communists.

In February 1947, the British told Truman they could no longer afford to keep their soldiers in Greece. President Truman stepped in. The USA paid for the British soldiers in Greece.

President Truman, speaking in March 1947: “Every nation must choose between different ways of life … We must help free peoples to work out their own destiny in their own way.”

The Russian newspaper Izvestia, March 1947: “This ‘American duty’ is just a smokescreen for a plan of expansion … They try to take control of Greece by shouting about ‘totalitarianism’.”

In the 1930s, America had kept out of Europe’s business. Now, on 12 March 1947, Truman told Americans that it was America’s DUTY to interfere. His policy towards the Soviet Union was one of ‘containment’ – he did not try to destroy the USSR, but he wanted to stop it growing any more. This was called the ‘Truman Doctrine’.

This Russian cartoon shows the Greeks being ‘helped’ by Uncle Sam (symbolizing America). Notice the $ sign on the gun.

The Marshall Plan: In June 1947, the American General George Marshall went to Europe. He said every country in Europe was so poor that it was in danger of turning Communist! Europe was ‘a breeding ground of hate’. [like Ariz–nevermind.-ed.] He said that America should give $17 billion of aid to get Europe’s economy going and stop Communism.

The institutions you represent could not have been born, could not have flourished and, may I add, will not survive in a world dominated by a system of cruelty that disregards individual rights and the value of human life in its ruthless drive for power. No state can be regarded as preeminent over the rights of individuals. Individual rights are supreme.

Today I come before your distinguished assembly in that same spirit — a messenger for prosperity and security through the principles of freedom, responsibility, and cooperation.

When our nations trusted in these great principles in the postwar years, the civilized world enjoyed unparalleled economic development and improvement in the human condition. We witnessed a virtual explosion of world output and trade and the arrival of many free, self-determined, independent nation states as new members of the international system.

And, as I said when I last spoke to you, the societies that achieved the most spectacular, broad-based economic progress in the shortest period of time have not been the biggest in size nor the richest in resources and, certainly, not the most rigidly controlled. What has united them all was their belief in the magic of the marketplace. Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

Trust the people — this is the crucial lesson of history. Because only when the human spirit is allowed to worship, invent, create, and produce, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding their destiny and benefiting from their own risks, only then do societies become dynamic, prosperous, progressive, and free.

In the turbulent decade of the 1970’s, too many of us, the United States included, forgot the principles that produced the basis for our mutual economic progress. We permitted our governments to overspend, overtax, and overregulate us toward soaring inflation and record interest rates. Now we see more clearly again. We’re working and cooperating to bring our individual economies and the world economy back to more solid foundations of low inflation, personal incentives for saving and investment, higher productivity, and greater opportunities for our people.

Our first task was to get our own financial and economic houses in order.

In closing, let me share with you a very deep, personal belief I hold. We are all sovereign nations and therefore free to choose our own way as long as we do not transgress upon the sovereign rights of one another. But we cannot really be free as independent states unless we respect the freedom and independence of each of our own individual citizens. In improving their lot, which is the only reason you and I hold high offices in our lands, we cannot forget that how we help them progress economically must be consistent with this highest objective of all — their personal dignity, their independence, and ultimately their freedom. That’s what this job of ours is all about.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

Reagan viewed the IMF as a means to expand economic liberty and political liberty for individuals–and a means to counteract communism and socialism, not to reward it.

Now maybe it’s in our interest that Greece not screw up the entire world economy again–but that’s a far cry from the vision Reagan outlined. This $7 billion “loan” of ours is more like insurance or maybe protection money than anything else, and it’s probably charity too, since we’ll be lucky to get it back.

But we shouldn’t invoke Reagan unless we mean it, unless we mean what he meant. He might well have held his nose and supported this out of necessity–maybe. But unlike Current Occupant, he wouldn’t let the opportunity pass to educate people on the bankruptcy of socialism, spiritually, intellectually and financially.

UPDATE: WWRD? I’m pretty sure Reagan would not support this:

The state owns 74 companies, mainly utilities and transport firms, many of which are overstaffed and loss-making, the OECD says…

Hundreds of state-appointed committees employ staff though it is not clear what they all do. Greece has a committee to manage Lake Kopais, which dried out in the 1930s…

– Asking Germans to bail out, say, a Greek economic crisis is actually asking them to bail out the Greek culture that produced it. And they will know it.

– German taxpayers will resent having to work hard and honestly to pay for those who choose not to for cultural reasons.

– German taxpayers will respond either by demanding an end to their handouts, or will themselves become more Greek – choosing to dodge taxes and to seek special favours to get what the Greeks enjoy. Trust will fall, as it tends to do in all multi-ethnic communities. The social contract, based on the fundamental notion that we offer the help we ourselves would expect, will crumble, since the Germans cannot believe that the help they give the Greeks would or could ever be reciprocated. And thus Germany becomes more like Greece, in the worst way.

– All these points apply, too, to any multicultural community in which one productive culture is told to subsidise a proudly unproductive other. Think only of the growing resentment of British taxpayers to finance big Muslim families which don’t educate their daughters, preach cultural separatism and are heavily welfare dependent.

I know, hard truths. Best not discussed, shout many. Yet watch the EU stumble under their weight.

UPDATED UPDATE: Upon further reflection, I think Reagan would today oppose our $7B IMF “loan” to Greece on these grounds:

1.) It’s all borrowed money in the first place. We’re simply don’t have the resources to toss down any more rat holes, especially with 10-17% unemployment.
2.) Reagan supported the IMF as an antidote to communism. He defeated Soviet Communism–his focus now would be on defeating American Socialism. And therefore Greek Socialism as well–not propping it up.
3.) Europe is no longer divided. Greece is an EU member–essentially a province state of the European Union, just as California or Iowa is a state. Europe needs to finance its own states; we’re already footing their defense bill.

Oakland voters will likely be asked in November to approve higher taxes to halve a $42 million deficit, but even if they agree, the city will face an even deeper crisis within months.

Ballooning pension costs will push the city’s projected deficit to $58.7 million by July 2011.

The biggest portion of that budget shortfall is a debt payment of $43.9 million due July 1, 2011, to the old Police and Fire Retirement System. The payment would be more than 10 percent of the roughly $400 million city budget.

Oakland teachers are ready to strike again if necessary if talks sour at the bargaining table, union officials said Tuesday. … Union leaders have said a raise must be part of any deal.

Administrators have said they can’t afford it, given an $85 million budget shortfall for the next school year.

Before he began using his Attorney General’s office strictly for political prosecutions, Jerry Brown left Oakland in shambles. Now he wants to be governor again.

The first mining deal that’s been allegedly killed by Kevin Rudd’s huge new tax:

The Rudd government’s proposed 40 per cent Resources Super Profit Tax announced Sunday has been slammed by the industry, along with BHP Billiton’s Marius Kloppers and Fortescue Metals Andrew Forrest, and yesterday caused $9 billion to be wiped from the value of the ASX’s top 100 miners.

Mr Sage today said on Perth radio station 6PR that the company would put exploration activities at its Cape Lambert south iron ore project in the Pilbara planned for the second half of 2010 on hold because of the tax measures.

Cape Lambert said it would now shift its exploration activities to its projects outside of Australia.

Money lost, jobs lost. Senior dealer Dave says many retirees have just lost a lot of money in their super funds, too, as mining stocks fall through the floor…

Is Rudd in a race with Obama to see who can kill the most jobs, destroy the most value and stunt the most growth?

The speech will have five main points: Protecting taxpayers when large financial firms fail; limiting the amount of risks taken on by banks; setting new transparency rules for derivatives and other complex financial instruments; stronger consumer protections; and giving investors more of a say in who runs firms and limiting executive pay.

I have spent most of my professional life suing Wall Street firms, so I have no sympathy for the many bad practices which have ripped off investors. …

The economic meltdown started with the people in government — including many of the Democrats who now are pushing for “reform” — who corrupted the credit practices of banks and other lenders in the name of progressive policies. The same policies which will cause our heath care system to collapse.

…Hence Obama taking the fight “to the place where the economic meltdown began.”

Except that it didn’t. The place where the economic meltdown began was in the offices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and the halls of Congress.

If Obama wanted to visit the place where the economic meltdown began, he could have walked there in just a few minutes.

The Tea Party will be there. Because what is a Free Lunch without some tea?

“I believe you deserve more than 30-second ads or vague promises. That’s why I’ve offered a comprehensive plan to get our economy moving again. It starts with a tax cut for the middle class…” –Bill Clinton’s first campaign ad, January 1992.

“I can’t [avoid raising taxes on the middle class] because the deficit has increased so much beyond my earlier estimates…”–Bill Clinton, February 17, 1993.

“I was on your side Bill, when you were losin’
I’d never scheme or lie Bill, there’s been no foolin’
But kisses and love won’t carry me, ’til you marry me, Bill!”
–Monica Alinsky and Laura Nyro-Farr, “Won’t You Slander Me, Bill? (The Liberty Bell Blues)”

RUSH: That was Bill Clinton, blaming me for the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19th, 1995. Yesterday we had the tea parties, and the Drive-By Media (I’m sure to its great chagrin) is filled with stories about how festive and how peaceful and how unthreatening all of the tea parties were. The effort to infiltrate these tea parties fizzled. They have stories on that that they probably do not like having to report. And, ladies and gentlemen, it’s very clear that these citizen uprisings — genuine grassroots citizen’s uprisings — are far more powerful than an attempt to drum up fake opposition to them from the White House. Yet, Bill Clinton is back in the game, expanding that threat via this sound bite.

… Bill Clinton once again trying to rebirth his empty threat from 1995. He starts out tracing the plot that started in the eighties to “demonize government.” I have a question. We have two more sound bites of the president here specifying right-wing talk radio, but I have a question: How come we’re supposed to draw (on the basis of no evidence), a connection between conservatism and terrorism, conservative ideology and terrorism? Where is that connection? Yet we are told we must reject, despite tons of evidence, the connection between Islamist ideology and terrorism. So we can’t call Islamist fundamentalists “terrorists.” We can’t even use the word. But we can have ex-presidents and current presidents running around trying to associate conservatives with nonexistent terrorism at peaceful tea parties. Somebody needs to explain this to me.

Shame on you Tea Partiers! You people have scared Clinton so badly, Clinton has been forced to flee to Canada to live with the girlfriend. Bill, not Hill.

If Sarah Palin had a Canadian boyfriend, do you think that…aw, nevermind. It’s not even worth asking the question.

Rush also thanks Regime Leader, just as Regime Leader has demanded. It’s not you, Leader, it’s just that Americans simply aren’t in the habit of lavishing praise upon demand for the “privilege” of keeping their own money.

Obama did indeed cut taxes with the Making Work Pay-credit. So why doesn’t he get credit himself?

Because he also raised taxes, such as the cigarette tax and now with CommieCare, a wheelchair tax, an Abortion Tax, a prescription tax, an insurance tax, etc.

There is also talk of a VAT, the Cap and Trade Energy Tax has already passed the House, and the EPA just released CO2 standards that act as a tax. The Middle Class knows that even if Obama has cut one tax, he’s about to slam them with a hundred new ones if he can.

And the Democrat Socialized Mortgage Meltdown was essentially a tax to redistribute wealth to poor people who couldn’t afford mortgages …and to rich people who are Too Big To Fail!

HANNITY: And back with me are the writer, director and producer of the film, Steve Bannon, and the film’s executive producer and president of Citizens United Productions, David Bossie.

You know, I’m thinking of this as I’m watching this particular here. Small business goes belly-up, they go bankrupt and they usually lose a lot. And what you’re saying here is that these Wall Street firms are protected. These big companies are protected. There’s been a shift in the paradigm.

BOSSIE: Certainly. I think and one of the things Steve brought forward in this movie so well is just what we saw here. In the old way it was done, you had to have personal responsibility. But this new generation, it seemed like the concept of personal responsibility was left in the mud at Woodstock kind of what we say. That it really — they lost track of who they were and it was all about me, the me generation.

BANNON: The investment banks are incredibly important in the post-war era, as integral part of the building the United States to industrial power. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, First Boston — these were partnerships with men that have fought in the World War II and put their country first, and had tremendous fiduciary responsibility.

What you just described, Sean, is that we have — we have two systems in this country. We have socialism for the very poor. We have socialism for the wealthy. We have capitalism for the middle class.

HANNITY: It’s an interesting way. I’ve never really thought of it that way.

BANNON: It essentially is. And the bailouts, all the financial bailouts, everything. The investment banking part of this meltdown is very important. That’s what people really don’t really understand. And it is a bail-out of the financial elites. And it’s really socialism.

HANNITY: It’s interesting you say this. Now — but it’s interesting that the incestuous relationship which you go into in the film between the Democratic Party and big business, because the impression, I think, of a lot of people if you ask, no, that’s the Republican Party, you know, big business, you know, they’re in their pockets, et cetera.

BOSSIE: Well, yes, I think if you look…the Democratic Party has truly taken over that position of power on Wall Street.

BANNON: I don’t want to get the Republican Party off the hook. …It’s really a party of incumbents. That political class is — their pay masters are the — is Wall Street. And by the way, 80 percent of those have come to the Democratic Party. So the Democratic Party has really shifted to what we call the party of Davos to represent big financial interests.

This is the original Jeffersonian Democrat model, with poor slaves and rich masters together vs. yeoman farmers.

It was the Republican Lincoln who stood for the merchant and the mechanic, i.e., the middle class.

William Jefferson Clinton’s real argument is with Lincoln, and his war is the Democrat War on the Middle Class and the Middle Class Movement we call the Tea Party.

Just for the record, Reagan didn’t oppose those tax rates out of concern for the wealthy, as demagogues claim.

He thought it was morally wrong to punish work and achievement. He thought it hurt working people like the the studio best-boys and theater popcorn-girls. And at that end of the Laffer Curve, government-mandated unproductivity actually costs the government money, not unlike Teddy Kennedy’s tax on yachts; it didn’t hurt rich people a bit, but until it was sheepishly repealed, it nearly destroyed the craftsmen of New England’s boat-building industry, which had flourished for four centuries until do-gooder, know-it-all liberals came along.

And yet for an increasing number of Americans, tax season is like baseball season: It’s a spectator sport. According to the Tax Policy Center, for the year 2009, 47 percent of U.S. households will pay no federal income tax. Obviously, many of them pay other kinds of taxes — state tax, property tax, cigarette tax. But at a time of massive increases in federal spending, half the country is effectively making no contribution to it…

We are now not merely disincentivizing economic energy but actively waging war on it. If 51 percent can vote themselves government lollipops from the other 49 percent, soon, 60 percent will be shaking down the remaining 40 percent, and then 70 percent will be sticking it to the remaining 30 percent. How low can it go? When you think about it, that 53 percent of American households prop up not just this country but half the planet: They effectively pick up the defense tab for our wealthiest allies, so that Germany, Japan and others can maintain minimal militaries and lavish the savings on cradle-to-grave entitlements. A relatively tiny group of people is writing the check for the entire global order. What proportion of them would need to figure out the game’s no longer worth it to bring the whole system crashing down?

Doc Zero mentions removing the vote from non-taxpayers–something like we had two centuries ago when only property-owners could vote. But he quickly dismisses that, and the real meat of his argument is this:

It’s not welfare, as conventionally understood, that is killing us. How much of that 47% who don’t pay income taxes are living in desperate poverty? The truth is that middle-class entitlements are the unsustainable tumor which fills the beds of Hospice America.

Social Security, Medicare, and now ObamaCare will swell to consume the entire federal budget, along with much of the wealth produced by the entire planet, within the next two decades. That’s the fearful nature of the deficit tornado spinning over Washington D.C. Charity for the destitute is not unsustainable, even when it’s pumped through the corrupt and wasteful digestive system of the federal government.

ObamaCare isn’t a system of health-care vouchers for the poor, financed by a tax on the middle and upper classes. It’s a complete takeover of the insurance industry, designed to ensnare both the middle and lower classes, with the ultimate goal of directly controlling fifteen percent of our economy. The old system of tax-and-spend welfare isn’t good enough for the Left any more, and the public long ago soured on it anyway. Both liberals and conservatives have always understood that massive entitlements for the middle class, such as the left-wing Holy Grail of socialized medicine, were the endgame. They only disagree in their perception of which game would be ending.

I hate the…argument, and I tend to think that conservatives are fools to make too much of it. On the face of it, on the level of the real world shorthand takeaway, the argument seems to put conservatives on the side of higher taxes for some number between 0 to 100% of the poorer half of the population, and according to some species of a “fairness” justification. You guys sure that’s where we want to be?

Tea partiers are concerned with the direction of the country, and people in my income range are afraid for their children. We always worked toward helping our children so they would have it better than us. It is as if the past 20 years toward that goal has just been flushed and now we have to scramble.

The taxation argument does not usually fly with lower income people, but the future of the country does, because no matter what you make, being an American is our first thought.

And then there are “fees”. and “licenses”. and “assessments”. and “costs”. and “permits”. and “penalties”.

There is certainly a blurring of the lines. The Feds keep funding more local education…and take more control. They vote for more Medicaid in Congress…but the states have to pay half the tab. Much of the Stimulus was federal spending for state and municipal union workers. The Stimulus also shored up state unemployment funds–although that may be fair, since the Feds wrecked the economy.

The Stimulus also enticed states to legislate more unemployment funding, even arrogantly ordering the balance of power between governors and state legislatures to be changed.

And even “dedicated” taxes are fungible. Al Gore’s Social Security “lockbox” is a notebook in the bottom of a file cabinet in West Virginia full of IOUs. The dedicated gasoline tax is merely transportation money Congress doesn’t have to spend out of general revenues.

Some days I wonder if Obama’s right; maybe it’s all just magic money. If so, the Welfare State is too stingy; if money is as meaningless as Washington acts, we should just give everybody a printing press and let them print their own money at will.

Or we could decide what is really important, make choices and find a reasonable way to pay for those choices. Because right now, we’ve decided everything is important and everything should be a government program and everything should be funded. Everything.

Mark Steyn, Doc Zero and Rush Limbaugh aren’t suggesting anyone’s taxes should be raised. Reagan’s answer to 90% taxation was not to raise other people’s taxes, either. Nor was it just to cut taxes.

It was to Stop the Insane Spending–because government–and liberals especially–have no internal mechanism that tells them where to stop.

As his polls continue to plummet, a devious and unpopular power-tripping president paces the White House halls mumbling to himself, as protesters ring the capitol daily. Observers fear for the president’s mental state…

The discussion between Nixon and H.R. “Bob” Haldeman was captured by the president’s secret White House recording system, except for an 18 1/2-minute gap where the tape was later erased. … “Haldeman,” Mellinger said, “destroyed the first 17 minutes of his notes and left the conclusion of his notes, which was not incriminating.”

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”). …

Therapists often speak of “inappropriate affect” — laughing at sad news, etc. — as an indicator of psychological disturbance. That is not far from what Obama displayed at the question-and-answer session in Charlotte described by Kornblut when he endlessly replied to a woman’s query about taxation. His response was inappropriate, to say the least. It also was a demonstration that at heart he does not believe his own ideas. Otherwise, why take so long? Methinks he doth protest too much, as the Bard said. And protest he does, like a comedian who knows he is bombing but keeps telling jokes.

Unfortunately, the joke is on us. Presidential proposals have become a manifestation of ego and not of thought-through deliberated policy. No attempt at bi-partisanship is ever really made because our leader is too fragile to compromise and too wounded to admit when he is wrong. For someone who arrived as an “intellectual” president, ideas are the least of it. He only wants to be right.

I know some conservatives think Obama is a socialist or a closet Alinskyite or whatever, but I think the problem is yet more complicated. No matter his ideology, this man is not fit to rule psychologically. Or, more properly, govern — but you know what I mean. He doesn’t have the temperament.

“If no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” — President Reagan, Jan. 20, 1981.

Economist Friedrich Hayek explained in 1945 why centrally controlled “command economies” were doomed to waste, inefficiency, and collapse: Insufficient knowledge. He won a Nobel Prize. But it turns out he was righter than he knew.

Thus, no matter how deceptively simple and appealing command economy programs are, they are sure to trip up their operators, because the operators can’t possibly be smart enough to make them work. …So once Obamacare passed, massive corporate write-downs were inevitable.

They were also bad publicity for Obamacare, and they seem to have come as an unpleasant shock to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who immediately scheduled congressional hearings for April 21, demanding that the chief executive officers of AT&T, John Deere, and Caterpillar, among others, come and explain themselves.

Obamacare was supposed to provide unicorns and rainbows: How can it possibly be hurting companies and killing jobs? Surely there’s some sort of Republican conspiracy going on here!

More like a confederacy of dunces. Waxman and his colleagues in Congress can’t possibly understand the health care market well enough to fix it. But what’s more striking is that Waxman’s outraged reaction revealed that they don’t even understand their own area of responsibility – regulation — well enough to predict the effect of changes in legislation.

The United States Code — containing federal statutory law — is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117 pages long and composes 226 volumes.

No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. … So long as the government is this large and overweening, no amount of effort at securing smarter people or “better” rules will do any good: Incompetence is built into the system.

“Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”–Dr. Auric GoldTonsil, in Ian Fleming’s novel “Cashraker: The GoldTonsil-Amputator”, 1959

Responsible adults can navigate a menu on their own to choose the healthier options, if they want to do so, without forcing restauranteurs to conduct the kind of lab analyses necessary to give accurate calorie counts for menus.

The impact on businesses will be disproportionate to their size. Large restaurant chains with standardized menus can handle this mandate less expensively per dinner sold, thanks to the economies of scale, which is why Chili’s has the information on their national website. Chains under 20 locations will get exempt. But what about those chains with just over 20 locations?

Davanni’s, a local pizzeria-sandwich restaurant with 22 locations around the Twin Cities, will now have to comply with this mandate. A caller to my Saturday show (who wished to remain anonymous) told my radio partner Mitch Berg during a commercial break that it will cost Davanni’s approximately $200,000 to comply with the new mandate — just to start. Every menu change will require Davanni’s to have the new or modified items re-analyzed, which means that Davanni’s will probably resist adding new options for their customers. Meanwhile, larger chains with more economy of scale for such efforts such as Pizza Hut can do the tests once for all of their locations, keeping their prices lower for their customers — which they already do, thanks to consumer demand for the information.

Under those circumstances, will Davanni’s feel compelled to keep the extra three locations open, or to scale back to 19 to avoid the mandate? Even if they do keep all of their locations, that $200,000 will now get spent on something other than new jobs for teenagers and adults, and customers will pay higher prices for their food. Local and regional chains with 15-19 locations have a big economic disincentive to expand any further. I don’t know much about Davanni’s bottom line, but I’m pretty sure that even though they make some of the best pizza and hoagies in the area, they don’t have $200,000 lying around the pizza sauce to blow on lab analyses this year, or any other.

This is a fundamentally anti-growth policy — and in service of what? A federal mandate to treat adults like children, as though someone buying a pizza might be under the delusion that they’re ordering health food.

“We have to pass the meal bill to find out what’s in it.”

Nor are the perverse, job-killing disincentives limited to the food and beverage industry. I saw a business-owner on the news who had 30 employees, some of whom had health insurance. If he covered them all, he would qualify for large tax breaks…IF he got the number of employees down to 25.

There have been too many Cloward-Piven moments to believe these are just accidents anymore. Liberals used to do stupid things with bad, but unintended, consequences.

Now, believing that the only way to transform a capitalist economy into a socialist economy is to wreck it first, they do stupid things with Intended Consequences.

It’s been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses.

This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or “political.” …

Meanwhile, Henry Waxman and House Democrats announced yesterday that they will haul these companies in for an April 21 hearing because their judgment “appears to conflict with independent analyses, which show that the new law will expand coverage and bring down costs.”

In other words, shoot the messenger. …

The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don’t make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.

Not only did they raise the tax, calling it “closing a loophole”, they also forced CBO to count it as billions in extra incoming revenue.

In fact, as Mark Steyn explained here, it will cost taxpayers twice as much!

The particular problem for the companies involves the prescription drug coverage they offer retired workers. In 2003, when President Bush and the Republican Congress passed the Medicare prescription drug entitlement, they offered a tax break to companies that continued to provide drug coverage for their retirees, rather than forcing them into the Medicare system. The new national health care bill ends that tax break, making it more expensive for the companies to continue offering the coverage. Ultimately, some analysts believe, the companies will stop covering the retirees, pushing them into the government system.

“Pushing them into the government system” is exactly what Democrats want it to do!

For all the faux outrage you’ll soon hear a’comin’ from Hangin’ Judge Henroy Wax-Beanman’s Kangaroo Kourtroom, this law is working exactly like Democrats planned it.

In true “Truth Ministry”-style, these hearings are designed solely to Hide this Truth, not discover any other.

Will the defendants–and that’s all of us–please rise to the occasion?

So that Government on the people, at the people and against the people might perish from the earth.

“The Peoria-based company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20 percent, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program. …

A letter Thursday to President Barack Obama and members of Congress signed by more than 130 economists predicted the legislation would discourage companies from hiring more workers and would cause reduced hours and wages for those already employed.”

The left wing media is cheering for all it is worth right now, desperately trying to drag the rotting husk of this monstrous abomination of a “reform” across the finish line. In their frenzy they do not appear to be smart enough to realize that their jobs are on the line, too. When companies have to cut costs, they will cut both employees and a lot of other costs.

Like advertising. The lifeblood of the media.

Don’t tempt me.

“In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.” …

Caterpillar noted that the company supports efforts to increase the quality and the value of health care for patients as well as lower costs for employer-sponsored insurance coverage.

“Unfortunately, neither the current legislation in the House and Senate, nor the president’s proposal, meets these goals,” the letter said.”

You may remember that the Preznit tried to bootstrap Caterpillar on behalf of the Stinkulus last February:

President Obama today repeated the claim we asked about yesterday at the press briefing that Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc., “said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.”

Caterpillar announced 22,000 layoffs last month.

But after the president left the event, Owens said the exact opposite.

Asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop the 22,000 layoffs or not, Owens said, “I think realistically no. The truth is we’re going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again”

In Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s words, “among all these persecutions [of the old doctor] the most persistent and stringent had been directed against the fact that Doctor Oreschenkov clung stubbornly to his right to conduct a private medical practice, although this was forbidden.”

In the words of Dr. Oreschenkov in conversation with Lyudmila Afanasyevna, a longtime patient and herself a physician in the cancer ward: “In general, the family doctor is the most comforting figure in our lives. But he has been cut down and foreshortened. . . . Sometimes it’s easier to find a wife than to find a doctor nowadays who is prepared to give you as much time as you need and understands you completely, all of you.”

Lyudmila Afanasyevna: “All right, but how many of these family doctors would be needed? They just can’t be fitted into our system of universal, free, public health services.”

Dr. Oreschenkov: “Universal and public—yes, they could. Free, no.”

Lyudmila Afanasyevna: “But the fact that it is free is our greatest achievement.”

Dr. Oreschenkov: “Is it such a great achievement? What do you mean by ‘free’? The doctors don’t work without pay. It’s just that the patient doesn’t pay them, they’re paid out of the public budget. The public budget comes from these same patients. Treatment isn’t free, it’s just depersonalized. If the cost of it were left with the patient, he’d turn the ten rubles over and over in his hands. But when he really needed help he’d come to the doctor five times over. . . .

“Is it better the way it is now? You’d pay anything for careful and sympathetic attention from the doctor, but everywhere there’s a schedule, a quota the doctors have to meet; next! . . . And what do patients come for? For a certificate to be absent from work, for sick leave, for certification for invalids’ pensions: and the doctor’s job is to catch the frauds. Doctor and patient as enemies—is that medicine?“

“Some say shift the tax burden to business and industry, but business doesn’t pay taxes. …Only people pay taxes, all the taxes. Government just uses business in a kind of sneaky way to help collect the taxes. They’re hidden in the price; we aren’t aware of how much tax we actually pay.”–Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation on the Economy, February 5, 1981

You see, the crafters of this legislation were smart. They realized that if they included one huge tax increase in the health care bill it would make headlines all over the country, so they chopped up the taxes into a bunch of smaller pieces in order to make them easier to swallow [you mean “hide” and “decieve”–Ed.]. In fact, one review of the Senate version of the health care bill identified at least 19 tax increases. When you put all of the tax increases together they add up to the biggest tax increase in the history of the United States.

Section 9008 – Imposition of annual fee on branded prescription pharmaceutical manufacturers and importers – This piece of the legislation imposes a $2.3 billion excise tax on the pharmaceutical industry. The tax is allocated across the industry and is based on market share, not on income. This tax starts immediately and is non-deductible for the corporation being taxed. These companies will still be required to pay their federal income taxes.

Section 9009 – Imposition of annual fee on medical device manufacturers and importers – This section imposes a $2 billion excise tax on the medical device industry. The fee is allocated across the industry based on market share, not on income. This tax starts immediately and is non-deductible for the corporation being taxed.

Section 9010 – Imposition of annual fee on health insurance providers – Another excise tax. This one is assessed on the health insurance industry in the amount of $6.7 billion per annum and is also based on market share. How can the imposition of $11 billion in excise taxes (section 9008, 9009 and 9010) on the health care industry reduce costs to consumers? Does anyone else suspect these companies will have to pass these costs over to consumers?

Even O’Donnell conceded that proposing the largest tax increase in American history during a painful recession and double-digit unemployment was a foolish misadventure.

“We liberal Keynesians do not raise taxes in recessions,” said O’Donnell. “We raise taxes when you’re making money. That’s when we raise taxes. And we love to do it.” …

SCARBOROUGH: But how fascinating, though; Lawrence, the liberal, has given Republicans a great talking point. Largest tax increase ever, in the middle of a recession, when real unemployment’s in double digits–that’s probably where the debate’s going to be and not on the Slaughter Rule this fall.

“I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.

But we have no choice. The city’s bureaucrats rival Stalin’s apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.”

“It certainly puts us in a position of looking like deadbeats,” said Sen. Mike Jacobs, an East Moline Democrat who got an eviction notice last year from a longtime friend who has rented the same building for years to the senator and his father before him. Payment eventually arrived — nine months late…” …

“When they can’t pay the rent of a Senate office, there’s no way they’re going to be able to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars in bills that they have back due,” Duffy said. “It just shows what a tragic crisis we’re in and how far out of hand this is.”

The voters can’t point the finger at state government as if they had nothing to do with their state’s current mess. They must share some of the blame for continually reelecting those bozos.

Now that the Democrats have spent Illinois back to the stone age, Illinois’ Democrat governor Pat Quinn wants to raise the state income tax by a third, from 3% to 4%. Not only are the Democrats irresponsible spenders, they’re irresponsible taxers, too. …

The Democrats’ terrible management of the Illinois state budget makes me think of a sign I used to see in a few offices of people I used to work with a number of years ago:

Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

Actually, it’s so bad that it might rise to that level.

And in the face of this, Congress is trying to pass the Most Expensive Program In the History of the World.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices. …

They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt. …

“Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” Kennelly said. “They’re as solid as what we owe China and Japan.”

Albany, a political “enterprise zone,” is a paradise for lawmakers who have gone into business for themselves. In a state which between 2000 and 2008 experienced a domestic outmigration of 1.5 million people—the highest in the country—almost the only job growth has come from the rapid rise in the number of lobbyists. Between 2000 and 2007 the number of lobbyists doubled from 3,000 to 6,000, while money spent on lobbying grew even faster, jumping from $66 million to $171 million. That makes New York the lobbying capital of America with 24 lobbyists per legislator. Illinois, the land not of Lincoln, but of Blagojevich, is a distant second with 12. And of course since lobbyists need people to lunch with, Albany has the second largest legislative staff (after Pennsylvania) in the United States. Albany’s 212 legislators employ 2,751 staffers, that’s 650 more than California which has almost twice the population.

In explaining his refusal to vote on a resolution that would cancel a 3 percent raise for state employees, State Sen. Bruce Patterson, R-Canton, cited the opinion of the state’s budget director that such an action would constitute an “unfair labor practice.”

This is simply not so. …

The bottom line is the Legislature has always had the authority to prevent pay raises authorized by the CSC, and collective bargaining agreements between the state and unions representing its employees have always been subject to the Legislature’s acquiescence. Because this override has not been used up until now, the confusion is forgiveable.

“The defenders of the status quo will start chattering as soon as I leave this chamber. They’ll say the problems are not that bad. The governor is overblowing it. Listen to us, we can spare you the pain and the sacrifice. This has been the siren song for too long, and we know that it is simply not true. New Jersey has been steaming toward financial disaster for years due to that kind of attitude.”

It looked like one of those Obama-stimulus scarified repaving jobs out there. Those of us who do a little backwoods skating on North Country ponds and lakes know the damage you can do to yourself hitting a ridge even at low speed. So you don’t want to run into one at 40 miles per hour. The cameras and microphones caught furious coaches from the Netherlands to China expressing their disgust to officials at the amateurishness of the Vancouver organizers. The event was delayed, and the American skater Shani Davis eventually withdrew, not wanting to jeopardize his chances of a Gold in the thousand meters by taking a spill on the 500 meters’ scarified ice. You train for years, you build your entire life to this one moment, and then the politically correct eco-gimmick screws you over. Officials attempted to reassure coaches and skaters that a non-electric Zamboni would be flown in from Calgary to prevent further delays.

Still, at least nobody’s dead. In Australia, the Labor government, eager to flaunt its green credentials, instituted a nationwide environmentally-friendly roof-insulation program, using energy-efficient foil insulation. It certainly reduces the carbon footprint of many Aussies’ homes: At the time of writing, 172 of them have burned down. It reduces your personal carbon footprint, too: Four installers of the foil have been fatally electrocuted. As the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s Tim Blair noted, the foil-insulation program has a higher fatality rate than Oz forces in Afghanistan. And, if the electrician survives long enough to get the installation completed, the good news is that, unlike the electric Zamboni, the electric attic always has plenty of juice: Colin Brierley had the foil insulation put into his Gold Coast home and was electrocuted a week later. The environmentally friendly electric shock entered through his knees, exited from his head, and led to a nice stay in hospital in an induced coma.

Australians are not happy to discover their ceilings double as the Bride of Frankenstein’s recharge slab. Belatedly canceling the program, Peter Garrett, the Environment Minister, is nevertheless insistent that he bears no responsibility for the burnt-out rubble and charred citizenry. He is a celebrity politician, formerly the lead singer of the rock band Midnight Oil, but he has no intention of getting burned by what they’re calling “Midnight Foil”. As Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, breezily told a TV interviewer, “Peter Garrett can’t be in every roof in this country as insulation is being installed.”

They never are, are they?

And now Obama wants to do for Jobs what they’ve already done for Mortgages.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

uhh–yeah–that’s, uh, really good. Now if only a coupla’ hundred politicians lost their jobs, too, that would be really great.

“The Unemployment Rate around America has not changed.”

More great news. I guess.

“Prognosticators thought it would go up and it has not.”

Harry has hit on the key here. For the last year, experts have been telling us every month that unemployment was “unexpectedly” worse. This month, they say it’s “unexpectedly” better. But either way, they’re admitting they were wrong. But they never lose their jobs.

Therefore, we need to give the 15 million unemployed Americans jobs as…experts!

After all, as an expert, even when you’re wrong, month after month after month, you can’t be fired. Problem solved!

Maybe all those doctors in lab coats at the White House could look at the president’s eyes. He was supposed to “focus like a laser” on jobs, but he hasn’t even found the eye chart yet–except for the one growth industry:

For starters, our Crappy Media has concentrated on the horse race rather than the reality. Shocking, huh? As usual, I had to go digging around for myself to find out what’s going on, and it’s much more of a mixed bag than the Lame-Stream-ers bothered to report.

First, Dirty Harry proposed an $85 billion mixed package of spending and tax breaks. Some Republicans like Sen. Hatch tentatively signed on, for the tax breaks anyway. Then Reid realized he was going to get slammed for Big Spending, so he broke the bill up into smaller packages without telling anybody. Hatch got mad and withdrew his support. But not before penning this op-ed with Chuckie Schumer:

“[A]ny private-sector employer that hires a worker who had been unemployed for at least 60 days will not have to pay its 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax on that employee for the duration of 2010. The Social Security trust fund will then be made whole with spending cuts elsewhere [Sure you will!-ed.] …this credit is “front-loaded” in that it provides an incentive for businesses to hire workers earlier in the year — because the tax benefit will be greater. …

[N]o business wants to wait until 2011 to receive a tax credit for someone it hires today. Another obvious benefit of this proposal to forgive payroll taxes is that it keeps money in a business’s pockets, since the tax is simply not collected in the first place. …For any eligible employee kept on payroll for a continuous 52 weeks, the employer would receive an additional $1,000 credit on its 2011 tax return.

I guess you could call the $1,000 credit “new spending”, but the 6.2% Social Security tax credit is not new spending, per se. These are tax credits, the weak sister to real tax cuts. It’s not a true tax cut because you still have to do what they say.

Washington prefers credits to tax cuts, because they still get to boss you around with your own money by using tax credits. Still, it lets employers keep some of their own money. And this is a large part of the $15 billion jobs bill Scott Brown just voted for.

But is it really $15 billion? Conservatives should be very careful about calling tax cuts or even meh-tax credits “new spending”. It buys into the liberal argument that you have to “pay” for tax cuts. In other words, according to liberals, letting you keep your own money is a big favor from the Big Gummint, who rightfully has first claim on it.

But as far as creating jobs that wouldn’t have otherwise existed?

Marginal at best, I think. A few thousand bucks isn’t a lot for guaranteeing a job to someone for a year, especially when unemployment insurance and maybe medical and other hidden costs are figured in.

The payroll tax suspension would slightly lower the cost of hiring workers. As a result, it would probably cause some companies to hire workers they otherwise would not have.

However, suspending the payroll tax for one year would not create better opportunities to produce valuable goods and services; nor would it increase the earnings a new worker would create for his or her company. Simply reducing the cost of a potential job will not cause an actual job to emerge if consumers fail to signal that such a job should exist. As a result, most companies would not expand and hire permanent new workers.

Instead, most of the tax suspension benefits would be claimed by companies that already planned to hire new workers.

* Agenda-Slowing Job Creation: Congress is continually threatening businesses with new taxes and more regulation. This creates great uncertainty over rising costs for entrepreneurs who want to hire workers or create new enterprises. A small, temporary credit will do nothing to overcome the job-killing agenda coming out of Washington.
* Stop Threatening Growth: Congress should drop its plans for higher taxes and more regulation. If it did so, businesses and individuals would get off the sidelines quickly and start investing again even without short-term tax gimmicks.
* Lower Taxes: Washington can encourage growth by cutting spending so it can further lower taxes in a way that will actually encourage economic growth and spur job creation. A short-term credit will do nothing to get businesses hiring, but reductions of marginal tax rates for businesses, individuals and investing will provide long-term incentives that will pave the way for real job creation.

With the grime of governance having replaced the gauze of campaigning, the country has now been able to focus on something that wasn’t quite as clear in November 2008: That when it comes to basic economic orientation, the main “change” in this presidency is a reversion to the pre-Bill Clinton days of Keynesian faith in centralized planning by technocratic experts in the name of empathizing with the downtrodden. It didn’t work then, and it isn’t working now.

You want to win back the faith that most voting Americans placed in you 14 months ago? Start by taking your own promises seriously, rather than treating them as short-term fixes for your long-term drop in popularity. Continue by taking the American people seriously, by acknowledging that their differences of opinion with you on economic policy spring from a genuine place. And finish by doing something no president since Bill Clinton has even tried: Scale back ambitions. Pay as you go. Limit the growth of government.

A thousand central planners before you have learned it the hard way: Prosperity isn’t something the government creates, it’s something the government, in the best case, can enable, mostly by establishing a set of simple rules and getting the hell out of the way.

And it will never, ever happen. This (via Insty) is more the cold, hard reality we’re looking at here:

ObamaNomics is built on the assumption that politicians are better stewards of economic resources than the millions of individuals and business enterprises who created those resources. The Democrats’ plan is to dramatically increase taxation to fund programs through which government can exert greater control over our lives.

But these data show that the private sector’s ability and willingness to generate wealth for government to seize through taxation is rapidly diminishing. These data show that Obama’s own actions are literally killing the goose that lays the golden eggs he needs to fund his agenda.

The drop in individual income tax revenue in fiscal 2009 was the steepest since 1939. As the chart shows revenue continues to plummet in fiscal 2010.

…The drop in corporate income tax revenue in fiscal 2009 was the greatest since 1932, the depths of the Great Depression. As the chart shows, revenue continues to crash in fiscal 2010.

Read ’em both. Their conclusions are the same, but the ObammieCommieCrats aren’t listening. They’re too firmly wedded to the nitwit Left’s reliable-failure economic theories — and too smugly convinced of their own superior intelligence and competence — to let common sense and the irrefutable evidence of history stand in the way of their grand schemes.

Update!The upshot of all this liberal stupidity and arrogance, explained by Ledeen:

I don’t think a vote of such magnitude was based merely on anger, a word invariably trotted out to explain Democratic defeats (remember the “angry white man” a few years back?). I do believe that passion played a big role, but a somewhat different one: not anger, but fear. They’re afraid of Obama. Afraid of what he’s doing to them, and therefore prepared to change sides.

This fear is extremely broad-based. It is not limited to social class nor to domestic or foreign policies. Banks are not lending, companies are not hiring, because they are afraid of what Obama will do next. Both are afraid of onerous taxes, including new health care burdens, and the banks fear new regulations and the consequences of the recently declared war on evil bankers by the president. Seniors are afraid they will be deprived of medical treatment. Juniors are afraid they are going to be forced to buy health insurance they don’t think they need. Across the board, Americans are afraid they’re not going to find work, and won’t be able to afford a house. And, as the Massachusetts vote showed, Americans are worried about threats from abroad, worried about Iran, afraid of terrorist attacks, and afraid the Obama Administration doesn’t take all this seriously enough. As Scott Brown put it, most Americans think our tax dollars should go to fighting terrorists, not to pay lawyers to defend terrorists.

Yeah, well, it don’t make ’em runnin’ scared, to use a quote that’s especially apt in light of the last sentence in Ledeen’s first paragraph.

As for “responsibility” for the Socialized Mortgage Meltdown, that lies mainly with politicians, mostly Democrats, though certainly not exclusively. That’s what happens when politicians try to be heroes with Other People’s Money.

Now here we are with the New York Times story about the Justice Department fighting “bias in lending.” If a banker rules out minority neighborhoods because he thinks they contain too many credit risks, Justice will come down on him like a ton of bricks for “redlining.” If he then makes amends by seeking out low-income minorities, and offers them loans tailored so they can afford them — no-deposit, “pick-a-pay,” etc. — Justice will come down on him like two tons of bricks for “predatory lending.”

Perhaps we should just cease all commercial and municipal activity altogether.

Obama is about to offer the hair of the dog for the national hangover. He wants Porkulus II, with even more spending on road construction that didn’t dent the employment picture at all the first time. AP’s analysis shows that it won’t create or save jobs the second time around, either.

That’s right.

In fact, the road-construction stimulus has a lot in common with Cash for Clunkers and the homebuying credit. All are temporary and limited attempts to get a one-time spike. It’s almost like a checklist rather than a strategy for creating long-term growth, a way to look busy without doing much of anything at all.

Yep.

Obama is stealing roadwork from the next few years and front-loading it into 2010. Not only will that not create much employment now, it will create a depression in the road-construction industry for the next several years.

I’m with you there.

It’s time for this administration to admit that it has no idea what it’s doing.

WHOA, Hoss! Hold on a minute–they know exactly what they’re doing: killing jobs is another way to grow the government.

Now, for those of you who think that there might be job growth on the horizon, be sure to factor in the coming layoffs in state, county, and city jobs. Now, the only reason those layoffs haven’t happened is Obama’s slush fund, which he calls the stimulus package. Because thanks to Obama’s stimulus bill, his slush fund, the states have not had to suffer mass layoffs needed to put their budgets in balance with true revenues, revenues not supplemented by payoffs from slush funds. So states all over the country are grappling with huge deficits thanks in part to a 10% unemployment rate or ten-and-a-half or 17. In some of these states it’s even higher than that.

The tax base has been decimated. This next year look for higher levels of job cuts in state, county, and city jobs. You can see with tax collections now falling for the third consecutive quarter, double-dip. When they run through this stimulus money that they got — you didn’t get it, the states did — to shore up their deficits, to shore up state employment — when they run through that and they’re going to run through it like a hot knife through butter then they’re going to have no choice than to start laying off people and the unions are going to howl and it’s going to be a big, big mess. Cities all over the country don’t have enough money in their budgets to clear snow from the streets, and when the snow is not cleared people can’t get to work much less the store. Vital city service can’t be provided in some places now. This has been caused now thanks to the failed economic policies of the buck-stops-here President Obama. The buck ought to stop with the private sector. But it doesn’t. Obama has made it his private sector, and he has failed, as has every other central planner who’s tried to micromanage a giant economy, or any kind of small economy.

Now, the reason Obama failed is because he embraces failed policies, failed political philosophies, knowingly. He took responsibility for job creation when tax cuts for the private sector were in order. And then there was this upside down comment about who was responsible for keeping the country safe. “This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.” That was Obama December 28th, 2009. When it comes to national security the buck stops with the president. When it comes to job creation, the buck stops with an alert and courageous citizenry who are far more resilient than an isolated central planner is, who really doesn’t care. He’s now almost a single payer in the student loan program. So there’s no improvement month to month in the employment picture. It is worsening. It’s going to worsen even further with state and city and county layoffs that are sure to come at some point in this new year. And then there’s going to be inflation with all this printing and borrowing of money, and they’re talking about a double-dip in the housing market now or commercial real estate.

I don’t mean to be a downer here. What’s frustrating is that once again this government’s governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own president. We are at war with our own government. They are the ones standing in the way of the private sector rebounding. They’re the ones standing in the way of job creation, purposely.

Even if you don’t believe it’s on purpose, Obama is at best ambivalent about unemployment–except for keeping his own job. That’s why he funded state and local government union jobs–and gave unemployment payments to everyone else whom the government drove out of their jobs with their Socialized Mortgage Debacle.

The rest of the Stinkulus Bill consisted of every back-scratching, feather-bedding pork-laden bureaucratic boondoggle that lawmakers had sitting in the bottom of their desk drawers for the last 20 years.

Far from being a well-planned infrastructure bill, they simply dumped out their desk drawers and passed every old project, projects that weren’t good enough to pass on their own the first time around. Then they tied a pretty bow around it and called it “law”.

Obama let Congress write the bill because he doesn’t care. His interest is Socialized Medicine, in hopes of putting government in control of you and your body and confiscating another 1/6th of the formerly free market, because he wants every future election to be about “How much are you going to expand my coverage?”

You don’t need no steenking job, pal. And this ain’t your father’s Democrat Party–unless your father was an Afro-Marxist bureaucrat.

Maguire’s got it — swingin‘. Things under Obama’s Four Year Reich have gotten so bad even the NYT can’t shine it on and spin it away anymore. If it weren’t so damned horrifying and dangerous, it’d be hilarious.

No one ever needed to “hope he fails”; he was always gonna, because his political philosophy is based on emotion, juvenile illogic, and rank dishonesty. But who really knew the failure would be so fast, so comprehensive, and so spectacular?